Maybe it's in there, maybe it isn't, maybe it is

It's hard enough to pick a snack from amongst the wide variety of delicious, salty, sweet, crunchy.. ahh... cruncheweezee choices out there... For those of us that have to watch our ingredients, these guys and their interesting take on pretzels has left me puzzled, and just a little bit unsure. Maybe there's wheat in it, maybe not. They don't seem too sure, either.

I watch my carbohydrate intake religiously, and I've seen products that tout 0g of carbohydrates and also list "sugar" directly in the ingredients (also "honey", "syrup", "flour", and things ending in "-ose" - all of them pure or extremely high in carbs). That's confusing as Hell for me. I've also seen some with a lower Total Carbohydrates than the sum of the itemized list just below it. I suppose they take a holistic approach. I know there's some rounding errors and variance in the products but it doesn't seem like it should be so much as to affect that. I'd spotlight them here but they're so common it's hardly WTF-worthy. Just frustrating.

I particularly like how the first ingredient is WHEAT FLOUR. Can you get more obvious?

Yes.. I've bought nuts (cashews, etc) with notices that state it may contain nuts. A picture is definitely more obvious than an ingredient listing, especially since the nuts aren't ground into flour or anything like that.

I particularly like how the first ingredient is WHEAT FLOUR. Can you get more obvious?

Yes.. I've bought nuts (cashews, etc) with notices that state it may contain nuts. A picture is definitely more obvious than an ingredient listing, especially since the nuts aren't ground into flour or anything like that.

When you look at ingredients, what you have is a listing of everything that's in the product, sorted by weight. Sometimes you'll see something like "natural flavour". Is that milk, nut, chicken, or what? If the allergy warning at the end says, "Contains wheat and soy. May contain traces of milk." That means that the cake mix has wheat, has soy, and may have traces of milk (To eliminate traces, a company must clean the machines three times. It's cheaper to just put a warning label than have 3 empty runs of the equipment.)

The "Contains or may Contain Traces of" is a static field. The data that follows would make more sense if other allergens were listed. If it said, "Contains wheat. May Contain traces of nuts." then it would make more sense.

Actually, I make some effort to keep Kosher, which involves somewhat more distinction than allergy information. Certain Kosher certification agencies are, shall we say, less than stringent when awarding their marks. Some companies also just casually toss a capital "K" onto the package in the hope that you're a reform Jew and don't really care whether it's been certified Kosher as long as somebody (probably not even a Jew, but who cares?) said it was.

Allergy information only extends to things that may cause allergic reactions. If you care about what you eat, or what your children eat, you're reading the label a lot more closely than that. If the label already says what's in the allergy information, and there's nothing non-obvious in the allergy information, you don't need it.

Now, if my pretzels may contain traces of shellfish, there should be a label. If my chicken soup may contain peanuts, there should be a label. But if the pretzels contain wheat and the chicken soup contains chicken, I don't need another label.

Now, if my pretzels may contain traces of shellfish, there should be a label. If my chicken soup may contain peanuts, there should be a label. But if the pretzels contain wheat and the chicken soup contains chicken, I don't need another label.

You're suggesting companies should make subjective decisions about what may or may not be obvious to their customers? That's not how things work. Even if you ignore the inevitable WTFs where they assume you know something that isn't particularily obvious or they duplicate information (which you seem to be against), there's the lawsuits. "How was I to know the chicken soup had real chicken in it? It didn't say so in the allergy information."

You're suggesting companies should make subjective decisions about what may or may not be obvious to their customers? That's not how things work. Even if you ignore the inevitable WTFs where they assume you know something that isn't particularily obvious or they duplicate information (which you seem to be against), there's the lawsuits. "How was I to know the chicken soup had real chicken in it? It didn't say so in the allergy information."

You have to draw the line of common sense somewhere, and I think that to most people, chicken soup containing chicken, and bread products containing wheat fall clearly on the "duh that's obvious" side. Or are you suggesting that staplers come with warnings saying "Warning: this stapler is not a food product"?

I think it's fair to say that having to put a warning label on food saying that it contains something that is inherent to what the food itself actually is is about as big a WTF as you can get.

You have to draw the line of common sense somewhere, and I think that to most people, chicken soup containing chicken, and bread products containing wheat fall clearly on the "duh that's obvious" side. Or are you suggesting that staplers come with warnings saying "Warning: this stapler is not a food product"?

No you don't. Our government insists on babying the population. That's why the majority have no common sense. I've seen plenty of household products that say "Do not eat/ingest, Not edible, etc", such as scented candles. If the government would just state "We aren't your babysitters. Act like adults for once!", we wouldn't have this problem. Alas, the litigation-happy populous screams for the government's "help" regarding these things instead of saying "Well, you idiot, you should've known you can't eat wax!"

it's only there because of the lawsuits. Someone sued and the other mfgs said screw that, we'll put our warnings on things. the only potentially annoying thing is that the allergy information section isn't standardized. sometimes it's right near the ingredients, sometimes it's on the other side of the jar. should be in a section like the nutrition content if it's so important to be mandated.

while I don't have allergies myself, my cousin is deathly allergic to eggs. that includes egg whites, egg yolks, albumin, globulin, vitellin, ovomucin and potentially anything new a "food" mfg wants to create. Many vaccines are cultured in chicken eggs. Where's the warning on those? The doctor doesn't even show you the label for that shot. People would dismiss such things as "food" additives in the line of all those other hard to pronounce ingredients.

Best bet: just eat stuff you make. fresh waffles taste 100% better than eggo. and I can make mine egg free.